How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874–1918. Heather P. Venable. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019.
The year 2025 will mark the 250th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, so a close look at how this service developed its distinctive elite identity offers a fascinating lens through which to view two and a half centuries of American military history. Heather P. Venable’s How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874–1918 does a fantastic job of spotlighting the conception of this unique image during the tumultuous decades that followed the American Civil War and continued through the First World War.
The Marine Corps has dealt with the issue of its very survival since its establishment in the late eighteenth century. Venable argues that between 1874 and 1918, the Corps endeavored to find a way to distinguish itself as an independent fighting force and identify what it meant to be a “soldier of the sea”—neither a soldier, nor a sailor, but a Marine. The Marine Corps during that era had difficulty selecting a single specific military mission for itself. In attempting to distinguish itself from the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, while at the same time trying to retain the best qualities of both services, it developed an exclusive image to safeguard its continued existence as an independent organization. Venable argues the Corps purposely crafted an identity for itself “in a way that made it almost self-explanatory to any American just what it meant to be a Marine.”[1]
Much more an institutional history than an operational history, How the Few Became the Proud builds upon a well-established foundation of books and articles that detail the history and development of the Marine Corps between the American Civil War and World War I. Readers seeking a more general military history of the Corps in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can consult Allan R. Millett’s Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps, J. Robert Moskin’s The U.S. Marine Corps Story, and monographs published by the Marine Corps History Division in Quantico, Virginia.[2] Those interested in better understanding what it meant to be a Marine during that period should look no further than Venable’s book. The author does not seek to rewrite what has already been written, but rather frames her work through a social-cultural lens to identify and explain the Marine Corps mystique that has captivated generations of Americans and those around the world.
The book is divided into two major sections: “Crafting the Corps’ Identity” and “Deploying the Corps’ Identity.” The first section details how the Marine Corps distanced itself from the Navy by developing a unique image and persona. The inspiration for and refinement of this new image benefited greatly from the Corps’ expanding role in the United States’ small imperial wars ashore in Central America and the Caribbean and by the adoption of new marketing and advertising tactics to improve recruitment practices. The second section discusses the impact of democratization and hypermasculinity on the Corps’ internal identity and external image, both of which had, by the early twentieth century, become well-known throughout American society. The chapter on hypermasculinization is particularly fascinating, especially as the author explains that the Marine Corps’ identity ironically became more masculine when women began joining the ranks during the First World War.
Venable accomplishes a great deal with this book, taking a subject familiar to scholars and enthusiasts of military history and exploring a facet of it in a truly innovative way. Her training and experience as a military historian—she currently teaches at the Air Command and Staff College, has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, and possesses degrees in history from Texas A&M University, the University of Hawaii, and Duke University—shine through in her work, as she expertly blends a captivating writing style with solid research and analysis. Especially praiseworthy is the strength of her primary-source research, which includes personal papers and oral histories collected from the Archives of the Marine Corps, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives; numerous articles drawn from newspapers and magazines of the era; and more than a hundred published books and monographs.
Venable’s skill in massing relevant sources and employing them throughout a narrative as engaging as it is informative is, in this reviewer’s opinion, the greatest strength of this book. One need look no further than the organization of the book itself: the main content is set at a fast-moving, readable 200 pages, followed by 92 pages of endnotes, none of which should be ignored. Readers may flip between the chapters and back matter because the endnotes are so expertly done. One can certainly read for the narrative and still very much enjoy this volume, but many will not want to miss out on the extra information contained in the notes.
Another of the book’s strengths is the inclusion of 20 images and advertisements that illustrate the evolution of the Corps’ public relations campaigns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the author describes, early recruiting practices that highlighted the Marine Corps mission and benefits of serving in the ranks eventually led to marketing the Marine Corps image itself, which showcased not what a Marine does, but who a Marine is. As “soldiers of the sea,” Marines were the “first to fight,” and men were challenged to “test [their] courage fighting with real fighters.”[3] One recruiting message sums it up beautifully: “Join the Marines ‘IF’ you can!”[4] This elite identity, of course, persists to this day.
A World War I Marine Corps Recruiting Poster (Pinterest)
As far as shortcomings are concerned, this reviewer did not identify any worth mentioning here. Just as critics of new scholarly texts should address the strengths and weaknesses of those titles fairly, they should also note when they do not identify any significant examples of one or both. Venable succeeds in outlining her research question and overarching thesis, keeping her narrative well within the boundaries of her subject matter, and defending her arguments with strong primary- and secondary-source research.
Military historians and Marine Corps history buffs will gain much from reading How the Few Became the Proud. Short enough to be finished in several sittings, well-organized to allow for skipping around to focus on one’s individual interests, and useful as a scholarly reference tool for writers and researchers alike, this book will undoubtedly serve the military history community well. One wonders if or when Venable will return to this subject to continue her analysis of the Corps’ image and identity following the end of the First World War, for this reviewer believes that a follow-up volume detailing the Marine Corps of the twenties, thirties, and forties in a similar vein would be equally well-received.
Christopher N. Blaker is a historian and editor who works at Marine Corps University Press in Quantico, VA. He is coauthor of the Marine Corps History Division anthology U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, 2010–2014.
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Header Image: U.S. Marine Corps honor guard during the Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery, Va., May 26, 2008. (Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/U.S. Navy Photo)
Notes:
[1] Heather P. Venable, How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874–1918 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019), 200.
[2] For a general history of the Marine Corps during the 1874–1918 period, see Norman W. Hicks, A Brief History of the United States Marine Corps (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1961); William D. Parker, A Concise History of the United States Marine Corps, 1775–1969 (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1970); Kenneth J. Clifford, Progress and Purpose: A Developmental History of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1900–1970 (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1973); J. Robert Moskin, The U.S. Marine Corps Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977); and Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Free Press, 1980).
[3] Venable, How the Few Became the Proud, 57, 134.
[4] Venable, How the Few Became the Proud, 162.